The Startup Operator

Pooja Goyal joined Avishkaar as the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer in September 2020. She brings with her over 20 years of global leadership experience in EdTech and product development with the likes of Adobe, KLAY, and PalmSource Inc. Avishkaar robotics kits are already used by more than 100,000 students in over 1100 schools across India. As the co-founder at Avishkaar, Pooja is looking to scale the company to the next level of growth and build a worldwide robotics and coding education brand out of India – a 38-billion-dollar market worldwide. Tune in to get a better understanding of how EdTech companies are changing educational norms with the help of technology. 00:00 - Episode overview  01:04 - Pooja's journey so far  05:18 - Being a serial entrepreneur  08:37 - Learnings from previous startups  12:11 - Avishkaar's founding story  19:27 - Managing stakeholders  30:22 - EdTech and educational institutions  37:19 - Being a VC-investible business Connect with Pooja -   Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/poojasgoyal  Twitter - https://twitter.com/poojasgoyal --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

Nexus Venture Partners (www.nexusvp.com) is India’s leading venture capital fund, with offices in India and Silicon Valley. It has over $1.5B under management across 5 funds and an active portfolio of over 70 companies across technology, internet, media, consumer and business services sectors.   In this episode, Roshan Cariappa hosts Pratik Poddar, who is Principal at Nexus Venture Partners. As an entrepreneur turned VC, Pratik is most passionate about consumer, community/content, education, e-commerce, financial services, and healthcare startups.  (01:37) Transitioning from an associate to principal  (05:17) Competing to work with the best startups  (07:12) Decision-making principles  (15:38) Overcoming covid-19 challenges  (21:20) Healthy market cues  (24:08) Evolution of EdTech  (27:45) Impact of edtech on teachers  (32:53) What makes content business investable?  (38:37) The next 10 years for India VCs   Connect with Pratik:  Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratikpoddar  Twitter - https://twitter.com/pratikpoddar   -------------------  Found this episode informative?  Let us know by hitting the like button & subscribing to our podcast. You can also Tweet or DM us on  - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator  Twitter - https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup   --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

Solving big data engineering problems, scaling an engineering team, and building core technology products - that's Pankaj's forte.   With 19+ years of experience, Pankaj co-founded Zendrive with Jonathan Matus and established the R&D centre in Bangalore in 2014. He leads the data science, engineering, and product teams at the centre which has 85 employees at present.   With a knack for solving hard problems in computer science and generating valuable IP for the company in the process (16+ patents filed), Pankaj spoke at length about some of the most fundamental engineering questions of a scaling startup.   Tune in!   - Pankaj's journey thus far (01:12)  - The common engineering problem (03:12)  - Application of AI / ML (04:54)  - What makes an ideal engineer? (09:46)  - Building an engineering culture (14:50)  - Problem-solving in Zendrive (25:57)  - Structuring an engineering team (30:01)  - Setting the right expectations (35:26)  - Growing in an engineering role (42:36)  - Working with other stakeholders (45:56)  - Hiring the right person for the role (56:55)  - Advice for founders on working with engineers (01:02:45)   Connect with Pankaj -   LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/risbood  Twitter: https://twitter.com/risbood  --------------------  Found this episode informative? Let us know by hitting the like button & subscribing to our podcast.    You can also Tweet or DM us on -  LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator  Twitter - https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

Welcome to another episode of The Startup Operator Roundup, where Roshan Cariappa and Gunjan Saha discuss -    👉🏽 Startup fundraise over the past week  👉🏽 Hot takes and news from the week that was in the Startup world    👉🏽 Razorpay's ESOP buyback and more...   Key points discussed in this roundup are: Roshan's take on Recent episode  GROWW in talks to raise $100Mn with Tiger Global  Pristyn care raises $80-$100Mn from Tiger Global  Cashify raises $15Mn  Razorpay ESOP buyback  RedX Delivery growth story  Flipkart listing: US SPAC or Traditional IPO  Vembu's Wisdom: https://tinyurl.com/fuvvmtm --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

Sujay Koduri heads engineering at Vymo which is one of the fastest growing enterprise tech startups in the world. Prior to working at Vymo he was the senior engineering manager at [24]7.AI. In this episode Augustus and Roshan talk to Sujay to find out how he manages engineering in a fast growing startup and more. Some Key points discussed in this Episode are  What Makes a great engineer?  Importance of facing customers, importance of being a team player  Alignment between engineering and other teams  Solving high level challenges  How WFH has changed the way engineers work  What goes into a large scale deployment to enterprise  Balancing freshers' autonomy  Key skills to transition from engineer to engineering manager  What's special about Vymo?  How do you work with existing systems and scale them later? If you liked this episode, don't forget to like, share and subscribe. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

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Welcome to another episode of The Startup Operator Roundup, where Roshan Cariappa and Gunjan Saha discuss -  👉🏽 Startup fundraise over the past week 👉🏽 Hot takes and news from the week that was in the Startup world 👉🏽 India's Tech Unicorns   👉🏽 Twitter's new features and more... Enjoy the week's summary with a cuppa as Roshan & Gunjan talk about, -  Top Fundraise of the week: Zomato, Zetwerk, Doubtnut, Inframarket, Jio & Kalaari -  Orios' Indian Tech Unicorn Report -  Sachin Tendulkar's Appointment as Unacademy's brand ambassador -  Twitter's Super Follow & Spaces features -  IndiaGold's aim to disrupt the national loan market -  Sachin Bansal's take on competition analysis -  Vembu's Wisdom Hit the like button if enjoyed this roundup, and do not forget to share among your operator friends!  Listen to our interviews and conversations with investors, operators, and founders on your favourite podcast platforms. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

To learn more about the nuances of early-stage startup investing, we have with us today Prayank Swaroop, a Partner at Accel, who invests in B2B, Consumer Brands, and Fintech. He has invested in multiple startups solving problems specifically for Indian Businesses across sectors.  He focuses on cybersecurity, developer tools, marketplaces, and SaaS investments. Some of the investments led by him are - Aavenir, Bizongo, Maverix, OnsiteGo, Securden, Sintel, Skeps, and Zetwerk.   Prior to Accel, he worked at Adobe and Standard Chartered Bank in India and Singapore. He held positions across engineering, product marketing, pre-sales, and product management.   In this episode, we talk about -  - How has early-stage investing changed? (02:35)  - Entrepreneurship as a career choice (05:45)  - Attracting top entrepreneurs (09:10)  - Mentoring entrepreneurs (12:12)  - Institutionalising knowledge (15:56)  - Identifying the right partners (19:23) - Overcoming challenges (27:53)  - Tackling small market sizes (32:43)  - Prayank's investment thesis (43:15)  - SaaS wave in India (48:44)  - SaaS Valuations (52:12)   -----------------------  Found this episode informative? Let us know by hitting the like button & subscribing to our podcast. You can also Tweet or DM us on -  LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator Twitter - https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

Welcome to another episode of The Startup Operator Roundup, where Roshan Cariappa and Gunjan Saha discuss -  👉🏽 Hot takes and news from the week that was in the Startup world 👉🏽 India’s first satellite from a Startup  👉🏽 PM's message to India's Startup founders ​and more... Enjoy the week's summary with a cuppa as Roshan & Gunjan talk about, - Top funding deals of the week: Zomentum, Ally.io, Zolve, & KreditBee - Freshworks Co-Founder starts a new venture fund for SaaS - Unacademy's acquisition of Tapchief to launch Unacademy Pro - Shaping India's Digital Future: PM's addresses at NASSCOM's Technology & Leadership Forum - Pixxel's upcoming satellite launch - Pawri @ Webengage Hit the like button on the right if enjoyed this roundup, and do not forget to share among your operator friends! Subscribe to The Startup Operator Podcast for regular interviews and conversations with investors, operators, and founders on your favourite podcast platforms. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

Meesho is India's largest social commerce platform, on a mission to enable anyone to start their businesses with zero investment. Our entrepreneurs largely comprise housewives (between 25-45) from middle-income households and/or tier 2+ India. Chetan leads Meesho’s engineering vertical as the Vice President. A Stanford graduate, Chetan has held multiple engineering roles at the likes of Qualcomm Flipkart, and Circle.ai. In the first episode of The Startup Operator Manager Series, Roshan is joined by Augustus D’Souza, Founder & CEO of Clergo, to have a chat with Chetan on - 02:20 - His journey so far  04:09 - Engineering at Meesho  10:54 - Product & Engineering overlaps  15:45 - Balancing product roadmap in e-commerce   18:27 - Hiring & onboarding engineers with domain expertise  23:43 - What makes a good engineer?  26:24 -  Focusing on quality  31:06 - Evaluating the right-fit engineer   35:19 - Transitioning from an engineer to an engineering leader  40:22 - Biggest challenges  42:57 - Remote operations Connect with Chetan - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chetan-kalyan ----------------------- Found this episode informative? Let us know by hitting the like button & subscribing to our channel. You can also Tweet or DM us on - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator Twitter - https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message